Japan at the end of the twentieth century: between Kyoto and Hong Kong, the quest of Nagiko, a contemporary Sei Shōnagon looking for calligrapher lovers able to write on her body. The story is a pretext for showing that cinema — even after a hundred years of supposed autonomy — is still and almost exclusively held up by literature. The volume records the world the director set up before shooting: to the screenplay are added his own project, the translation of the Japanese poems the heroine paints, and Nagiko's complete diary, of which the film offers only extracts. It is a contemporary homage to the Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon, the woman of letters and of the court responsible for that masterpiece of the Heian era.